Gaming

Baldurs Gate 3 and it isn’t that close, I really liked Tears of the Kingdom and finally getting to Cyberpunk too though

Wow, thought I'd be in the majority with this but Baldur's Gate 3.

Followed closely by HiFi Rush and Sea of Stars.

Disco Elysium for sure. The story enraptured me and the characters had so much depth

Dave the Diver

Favorite so far was probably Talos Principle 2. It was excellent, best movie of the year. And the puzzles were fun too.

Dredge, surprisingly enough. What a memorable game

I was surprised how much I loved Hogwarts Legacy. I am not a big Potter fan, but this game really nailed that Universe. Even just wandering around aimlessly was journey of whimsical discovery. I have ToTK, BG3 and Cyberpunk 2077 all on the menu this year, but Hogwarts got the majority of time played by a long shot.

Final Fantasy 7: Remake. I now understand what all the fuss was about and why it's probably the most famous out of them all (I might be wrong on that). I haven't played the original so this was a great introduction.

Absolutely Disco Elysium. I don't think there will ever be another game like it

Honourable mention to Quake 2 remaster for being mindless fun

Definitely CrossCode, I didn’t expect to love it as much as I did. I still need to play the DLC.

I finally took the time and played through the souls series. I'm still going through 3 right now but they are all great games (2 less so). I'm not a complete stranger to the series (I've beaten Bloodborne, Demon's Souls, Elden Ring, and Sekiro) but I've never actually sat through the main series. Gotta say it did not disappoint. DS2 had some moments that were a slog but even with the dip in quality it's still a great game, just the worst of the Souls-like games.

Also been playing BG3 and Disco Elysium in between.

Next few years are gonna have a lot to compete with in terms of the sheer quality of games I waited to play until this year.

Diddy Kong Racing.

Cyberpunk 2077. Was sad when it ended will need to grab PL as by accounts it’s even better.

The Talos Principle 2. It's a game about communism. Play it.

I also really enjoyed Blasphemous 2. Great metroidvania with some gnarly Spanish Catholic art.

Snagged Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy for $3.50 and have been enjoying it with the config files altered for higher damage/dismemberment with lightsabers.

Makes fighting force users really tactical because you have to avoid their saber too, dismemberment affects you and is an instant death. You can get cool kills like rolling underneath their saber throw and Darth Maul'ing them while they're unable to deflect you, etc.

Incredible Jedi power fantasy, as much as I like Fallen Order it just doesn't sell you on the fact that you have a lightsaber in your hands as much as Outcast and Academy do with the damage increased. Hell you can kill stormtroopers just by walking into them and moving your blade slightly, now that's a lightsaber!

Lingo. It tickles my brain in wonderful ways. I'm currently working through the custom level Liduongo, sequel to an earlier map named Duolingo, and I continue to be surprised, delighted, and utterly perplexed.

It's a rules-based puzzler that doesn't tell you the rules buried in a confusing labyrinth. The only downside is that it requires a strong grasp of English, limiting its audience.

Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead - Sky Islands Mod: By far and away the most interesting survival singleplayer game I have ever played. Complex? Yeah there is a lot of stuff but don't let anyone convince you CDDA has an obtuse UI, it has easy to remember keybindings and the interface is easy to navigate. Can't remember the key to do something? Hit "?" and type the name of the action and boom there it is.

Sky Islands turns CDDA into a run based game (sort of like tarkov I guess? idk) and it is just what CDDA always needed for me. Instead of being free to roam the procedurally generated landscape of CDDA going wherever you want, each time you venture out from your island in Sky Islands you spawn in a random place and must make it to a portal home within a couple of hours or you die. There could be any number of obstacles in your way between you and the portal including zombie infested cities, swamps, craters, mass graves, massive fungal towers with deadly spores or shudders worst of all RIVERS... (No joke, surprise rivers you get stuck on the other side of will more thoroughly doom you than anything else).

If you reach the portal home you can only take back through the portal what you can hold in your hands and on your back. Stay as long as you want on your sky island before returning for another run but don't exhaust your critical supplies and remember that with every day that passes in CDDA the monsters grow more horrific...

Baldur's Gate 3. Boring answer but it's just very goddamn good.

I was certainly behind the curve here, but Horizon Zero Dawn! I was expecting some vagely Zelda like adventure RPG (and it was), but the story was so much more compelling than I expected. What a memorable game! I even got a second hand PS4 to play the sequel on... which I haven't for like 6 months now. >_< (Too many other things to do!)

TOTK followed by Spider-man 2.

You never said new game, katamari damacy Cause im getting older and rarely if ever find a "must play" of current year

Remnant 2. Loved every bit of it.

It's a toss-up between Dave The Diver, BG3, and Cassette Beasts

In the last 10 years I have only played 5 games... Yeah, I'm a creature of habit with a potato PC. Portal 2 and Skyrim are the only ones I've played this year. Even though I play Skyrim more, I can't get enough of the characters in Portal 2 so that's my choice.

Hot Wheels Unleashed. More fun than I thought it would be, and the fan-made online tracks were wild.

Inscryption was really fun my friend bought it for me. Came out in 2021 though

Baldurs Gate 3, hands down. I played High on Life this year too. Great game, but I haven't played anything but BG3 since I bought it.

So I absolutely love Street Fighter 6. Almost every thing is done incredibly well(not the cost of dlc costumes though, that is fucking robbery). Has one of my favourite single player story modes, the best arcade lobby with actual interesting side stuff in it, fantastic netcode and on and on.

I also was to throw out a few other stand outs

• Granblue Vs Rising
• Crab Champions
• Baldurs Gate
• Spider-Man and Miles Morales
• Octopath Traveller 2

Have loved every single one of those.

Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart on PC. Brought back a lot of nostalgia but also stood on its own very well. I can count on one hand the games I've bothered to 100% and this is one of them.

As far as games from this year Alan Wake 2. Im not done with it yet but it's making a solid case for being my favorite horror game of all time

I didn’t start playing BG3 ‘til October, but it’s all I’ve played since then and I have not looked back

NO question, Flight Simulator 2020. Followed by Trackmania 2020. Apparently I have thing for the year of the pandemic...

Songs of Conquest. A HoMM3-inspired turn-based strategy game, still in beta.

Definitely Jusant. It was just such a perfect game for me when I played it, chill but engaging in exactly the way I needed it, and something about the story just went straight into my heart unlike any other!

It's old, but I played Diablo II Resurrected on PS4. I started with small doses at a time then just went balls deep into it. I played for about a month and beat it with an Amazon.

I started to play it with a 2nd character but saw it was pretty much the same game with a different character. I mainly play Call of Duty with my dad other teammates.

Remnant 2 and Alan Wake 1

Elder Scrolls: Online. Yes, I know I'm ten years late to the party, but it's been a real blast! Never played an MMO before, and ESO has probably ruined me for other MMOs.

Rogue Trader. It's a cozy traditional cRPG out to its fingertips. Walls of texts, static perspective and all those traditional goodies. Combat is engaging, the word ridiculous to absurdity and the characters almost over the top. As WH40K should be.

By hours played, it's either Valheim or Baldur's Gate 3. Fallout 76 should get mentioned, as it was a lot of fun until it wasn't. Falling victim to the story lines sort of running their course and the game turning into a standard MMO grind-fest. I'll also mention Green Hell, which was a passable survival-crafting game with enough story to make a "play through" actually have a meaning. Even if that meaning had all the subtlety of a tactical nuclear weapon. It's also still seeing development, so it might be worth going back too. Finally, there was Raft, which was another fun survival-crafting game (is my preference in games obvious?), which also went for the subtlety of a water buffalo rutting. Again, fun while it lasted, but hardly worth playing more than once or twice.

Project Muse, and I became the best player in the world!